


A Better Boy

by valda



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Implied abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:55:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3610833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valda/pseuds/valda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you die, you forget things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Boy

As the world blurred and faded and turned to black, he knew he was about to die, and he had every intention of being vengeful. But when you die, you forget things.

He entered death slowly, and it was as if he was wading through a thick fog. He wasn't dead for quite some time. But he was outside his body. He could see what was happening. He watched as skin was meticulously cut, bone was skillfully sawed, tendons were resolutely snipped, veins were carefully pinched off. He saw his slack face go blue from lack of blood. And then, finally, there was a wrenching, a tearing, a _screaming_ as a connection he hadn't realized was still there was severed.

He wasn't floating, not really. He no longer had a physical form. And yet he had a shape. He could sense it. He had a shape, and it was much smaller than his original shape. But he didn't quite understand why.

He wasn't floating, but he had a position in space. And he found that he could change that position.

There was something on a table in whatever room this was. And there was something in the garbage. He thought there was a connection, that it was all somehow important, but if he still had a mind, it couldn't keep hold of that thought, or any other. He felt a pull and he followed it, out of the room and down a hall, and down another hall and another, and finally to a different room, a room with fake plants and old chairs and end tables covered in ancient magazines and walls covered in blandly pastel art prints.

A woman sat in one of the outdated chairs. She was reading a copy of Everyday Poisons. Her face was like his face in some ways, and in other ways not at all.

Did he have a face?

"Not long now," the woman muttered, and her voice sounded _right_. He hummed to himself and drew nearer. "Not long now," she repeated.

A door opened, and a different person, wearing all light green, stepped through. "Ms. Sandero?" she said.

"Yes," said the woman, carelessly tossing the magazine onto the table.

"The surgery was a success. He's resting now. You can see him in a few hours."

The woman smiled. "Very good," she said.

He felt what he thought was an emotion. He thought it was happiness, and that it was because the woman was happy. He didn't remember what happiness was, really, but it seemed like a nice thing. He thought vaguely that if he had a chest, it would be swelling. But of course, he didn't have a chest.

He was too small to have a chest now.

He was very small, and suddenly that truth made him lonely. He wanted to be close to the woman. If he was close to the woman, he would no longer be alone.

Being near the woman was all he wanted. But the thought of approaching the woman was terrifying.

He moved forward, slowly, and some old instinct had him holding breath he could no longer breathe. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, he barely dared.

Suddenly the woman rose to her feet, and he was close enough that she stood up right _into_ him, and her flesh touched whatever form he was now and her face _twisted_ and her eyes gaped and her mouth fell open and there was _shrieking_ , high and long and terrified, and the woman flailed at him as though to slap him away, her arms passing through him...and then she was shuddering violently and turning and stumbling and running and running and running.

Soon she would be gone, and he couldn't bear that.

He followed.

~

He decided he wouldn't get as close to the woman as he wanted. But he stayed where he could sense her.

She recovered from their brief moment of contact quickly. He wondered if he should be surprised--but he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling surprise. Surprise was an odd thing, experienced by the living.

He watched the woman procure a steaming Styrofoam cup from a vending machine and then sit down at one of the many tables in a large room with a long bank of windows. She set the cup aside and pulled a book called Principles of Summoning out of her purse. Her hands were still shaking a little as she flipped through it, finally coming to a stop a few pages into a chapter titled Host Transference.

"Yes," she said quietly, "there it is." Her blunt fingernail jabbed at a sidebar labeled Possibility of Haunting. "I should have known you wouldn't just go quietly. You're just like your father. _Just. Like. Him._ "

Her eyes were hard and a little wet.

"Did you follow me?" she asked roughly. "Are you here now?"

_Yes,_ he said, but though he had a mouth, had teeth, had a tongue, had vocal chords, he no longer had lungs, no way to propel air through his throat in order to make sound. He wondered if she really wanted him to answer. Would answering please her? He wanted to please her. He wanted to be able to speak.

He slipped forward and brushed her shoulder.

She hissed. "There you are," she said. "Haunting me, are you?"

Haunting. Maybe that was right. It sounded familiar. He thought he remembered thinking something like that...

He smiled and brushed her shoulder again.

"Damn you," the woman gritted out. " _Damn you_." She focused her attention on the book. "A normal exorcism won't work, it says. I'll have to do another summoning. And I'll do it, too. Just you watch. I always do what's necessary."

~

His name, he thought, was Michael Sandero.

It came to him all at once, and it was foreign, but he didn't understand how he had forgotten it.

The woman he was so drawn to was his mother.

There were flashes. A loud voice. A loud television to cover a loud voice. Half-empty cans of tuna fish. Bruises.

Becoming strong.

His mother was standing on the roof of the Pinkberry, yelling down to a boy Michael's age or maybe a little older who was standing on the sidewalk with a tape recorder. "This new head's much handsomer and doesn't talk back as much," she called.

She was talking about the head attached to the thing that had been under the sheet on the table in the room he could barely remember. The room with the other thing that was in the trash.

Michael felt oddly compelled and repulsed by the thing. By both things. But one of the things was gone now.

"This new head only speaks Russian, so I don't have to listen to him on the phone with his girlfriend all night long, and he can't hog the television because he doesn't understand any of the English or Spanish programs here. He's a better boy now."

His mother was stabbing pikes into the roof in an arcane pattern. Speared on each pike was either a vulture or a rat. He'd watched her collect them, in the desert and in alleyways.

He knew what she was doing. She'd told him.

And it was fine. It was what she wanted.

Except...now there was something else, something he'd forgotten.

_Girlfriend_.

There was another flash, and he knew. _Girlfriend_ was the young woman he'd seen talking to the head, rolling her eyes, stalking away in frustration. She was...

_Natalie_.

_Natalie_!

_Wait_ , he mouthed to his mother. _I want to tell her he's not me. I want to tell her what happened_.

What _did_ happen?

And then, finally, the haze of death evaporated and Michael Sandero _saw_. He saw his mother signing papers. He saw the mask descending upon his face. He heard his mother whisper, "Soon you'll be gone. And finally there will be no trace of him."

And he remembered his rage.

The pikes began to shake. Flora Sandero flung her face to the heavens and bellowed at the clouds, and they parted, and Michael felt a _pull_ , and _no, no, no,_ not _now_ , not when he had just _remembered_!

The tug of the softly glowing red crystal was inexorable, and Michael, though he had no physical form, could do nothing but be dragged toward it. His spirit-head--for his body still lived--was powerless against this ancient ritual.

He was Michael Sandero. But soon he would be nothing.

He fought the pull so hard he thought he would shatter. But it was no use.

His last act as his soul was absorbed was to gaze down in helpless fury at his murderer.


End file.
